A massively multiplayer online (MMO) game is capable of supporting thousands of players simultaneously. Typically, such games involve video. A social MMO game is a MMO that leverages an online social graph (or network) to make a MMO game more interesting to its players. Often social graphs are maintained by social networking websites such as Facebook or social media websites such as MySpace. But one might think of a contact or buddy list as a primitive social graph.
One tactic to make MMO games (including social MMO games) more engaging is to create a game task that is a social (or team) task, e.g., a task that requires assistance from a player's friends (e.g., on a social networking website) to accomplish.
However, if, for example, a player has relatively few friends or if the player's friends play the game relatively infrequently, such a social game task can lead to disappointment in the player and, in the worst case, the player's withdrawal from the game. In turn, player disappointment/withdrawal can result in a reduction in the game's revenue potential (e.g., from the purchase of virtual goods or from third-party advertisements).